Your best/funniest/whatever mistakes on stage.

[Linky Lee]

Well, I've just got back from a small big band gig at a local pub. Easily the worst performance we've given as a group, ever. Don't think we'll be asked back somehow.

My first "mistake" is as follows:

We get there in plenty of time and get the stage ready. We're surprisingly organised and have the music and set list ready before we arrive.
We're just about to kick off so I'm warming up my chops and instrument (The Walstein) When I realise I can't play below low C. Yesterday I noticed that a few pads were leaking after a years hard work and decided it needed a check over pretty soon, so immediately I thought, damn I've got a leaky C, I visually checke it and could see it wasn't quite sealing properly and promptly told the band I can't play below low C# so don't worry if I start re-arranging my parts slightly...

we've been playing 20 minuted or so and my tone is pretty thin and boring and I'm seeming to be drowned out, even though we're playing acoustically and I'm the loudest reed easily. I think it must be the new ZZ 3s I'm using. So I change to an old worn in 2.5 and it's just a worse tone.

After 30 mins I had a break in the middle of a number and took the weight of my sax in my hand instead of letting the sling bear it. That's when I felt the soft fluffy case of my clip on mic inside the bell and removed it showing to the bari player who promptly had a fit of laughter and missed his cue. Then I took my solo and could hear myself. Just to make sure all was good I played a nice little rising pattern involving octave jumps to make the changes during the chorus. Lovely.

My cheeks haven't been that rosy for a long time.

So what's your "best" mistake?

 

[Bobby G]

Playing an acoustic solo gig many years ago, and alternating between six and twelve-string guitars, I carefully leant the six-string against the wall behind me and commenced a couple of numbers on the 12. Not too far into one number, I heard the unfortunate sound of the six-string sliding to the floor and turned round to see it lying on its back with the head snapped off :cry:

I took it home and lovingly glued the head back on (it was a nice clean break along the grain of the wood) and nearly thirty years on it's still solid and is still my favourite guitar.

 

[peter_fitton]

Playing guitar in a band with a few co-workers at an extremely naff & embarrassing xmas office party about 12 years ago. We played a pretty good version of the Doors tune Roadhouse Blues.

All went well until the very final bars when I somehow managed to drop my pick just before the climatic solo blues guitar part.

not that it mattered as everyone was too p----d to notice anyway.

Cheers

Peter

 

[Djangette]

At least you were making some noise Linky.

I remember my husband stepping up to mic to take solo and nothing coming out at all . . . he improvised with clarinet quickly - the problem was pad-saver left in saxophone! :laugh:

Also his tenor pinging to pieces at end of one solo - people still remind me of that one nowadays. I remember him frantically scrabbling around for the bits and telling everyone else on stage not to move!

Some things that weren't so funny at the time:

Pissed trumpet player falling over backwards when playing long note at end of solo - straight through the bass drum.

Drummer turning up at gig late in his van - looked in van, he'd forgotten his kit.

Bad, bad female vocalists

 

[alan_]

Last Saturday!!! - Our funk band was playing a Charity Gala Ball at a posh hotel. The whole band was there early (11 of us), dressed up in our costumes, warmed up well in the green room, good pre-match team motivation thingy, pumped, ready-to-go, MC introduces the band, the horn section out first (Trumpet, Tenor Sax (that's me), Alto). We have to walk in front of the stage around to the other wing and take up position on the stage right. So the horn section strutt out, shades, bling, platforms, flares, we're swaggering in an exageratted funky 70's type strutt 8) . Everyones is up on stage now and we launch into a very upbeat number - Give It up...................ah :? .....completely forgotten my radio mic in the green room . I have to come off stage, walk back the way I came, in front of the whole audience, while the whole band is playing and scurry back to get my mic and then scurry back again, in front of the audience, back onto the stage, just in time for my solo, which was a complete silent 8 bars, because my mic wasn't turned on yet :laugh: .

Things got a bit better after that. We actually put on a reasonble show and had a lot of fun, but boy did I feel silly. Organisers really shouldn't provide tequilla in the green rooms !! 😉

 

[old_git]

Way, way back in my folk days, playing a solo set in the pub just across the road from Norwood Cemetery, very appropriate. Play a style called frailing on the banjo where the fifth string is ultra important, and the fifth string tuner broke. Four string banjo played five string style accompanied by whispers to the club organiser to get me off.
Never went back.

 

[jazzzzz8]

Some crazy chick into the sax, dancing in front of me, sexy,yes. I was playing Soprano, then she fell forward onto me, luck me you think, no she cought the bottom of the sax pushing the reed into my lip sh.............. my lib burst had to have three little stiches. carried on playing blood dridding all over the sax..It was on loan at the time.

 

[jazzzzz8]

oh my spelling

 

[stephen_howard]

Blimey - I got loads of these!

Did a gig in a Weatherspoons pub a few years back with four of my pals from one of my London-based bands...mostly cover rock stuff.
The sound was awful - and I had no monitor at all.
As it was only a 90 minute gig we decided to bang on through without a break - so I had no option but to 'play by the numbers' and blow as hard as I could.
I've done those sort of gigs before - and whilst it's a pain not being able to hear myself I know the songs well enough to motor through them without any problems.
To make matters worse I'd got 'bubble ear' - you know, where you get that sort of watery bubbling in your ear in a noisy environment. All I could really hear was a sort of 'Grruoommph grruoommmph' from the bass and drums.

Every now and again though I caught a snatch of foldback, but for some reason it didn't quite sound right. I couldn't work out why because it was the merest snatch, and because my ears were playing up it all sounded very distorted anyway.
So I was pleased when we hit the last number....which was Robbie William's 'Let me entertain you'. This has huge horn solo at the end which just has to be loud, fast and mad...and that's exactly what I gave it.

Couple of minutes later and we're all sitting down having a beer, doing the traditional post-gig analysis. Turns out we were all in the same boat - none of us could really hear each other, and we weren't particularly loud either. We just put it down to the acoustics.
One of the guys commented on my last solo - said it was a 'bit different' from my usual style. I felt quite chuffed - it's always nice to stretch one's boundaries, I feel.
Didn't last long though, 'cos the very next comment from the bass player was 'How did you get on with the semitone drop?'.
Turns out that we're none of us getting any younger, so in order to make it a tad easier on the vocals the guys had detuned a semitone just to bring a couple of numbers back into the singer's range....and I'd played a 90 minute set exactly a semitone sharp.
No-one had thought to tell me at the start.

As I walked through the pub on my way out to the car at least half a dozen people shook my hand and said 'Great sax playing mate, wicked!'.

 

[daveysaxboy]

Well at a wedding do when the singer called up the happy pair i started to play happy birthday instead of here come's the bride,what a plonker i felt.Once in my soul day's i was running down the side isle in a club with my shade's on and never saw the step,the huge one with my name on it,went flying but just held on to my mk6,once again a plonker and the crowd had a big laugh.Many more of them i could think of,or rather not.One more time,WHAT A PLONKER.

 

[Bobby G]

jazzzzz8 wrote:
oh my spelling

Don't worry about it, I think 'driddling' is a very useful and apt addition to the English language - kind of a combination of dribbling and noodling, somewhere that most of us have been, probably.

 

[losaavedra]

Back in 1963 I was in a couple of semi-pro bands doing gigs around the East Coast of England. One of our regular venues was at a Suffolk coastal pub renowned for a late evening clientele made up of guys who came in off of the fishing boats. They were locally known as Fish 'Ards (as in hard blokes who fish!), short, stocky, black curly hair, earings ... looked like romanies ... and you wouldn't want to bump into any of them on a dark night. Anyway, when they arrived (usually at the start of our second set) ... the bottles started to fly ... but we didn't have the benefit of the chicken wire screen as seen in the Blues Brothers movie. We didn't take it as criticism (all the bands that played there got similar treatment) but it can be just a trifle disconcerting when there's glass showering down the back wall during the solos! Luckily their aim was pretty bad and none of us actually got hit by one of their missiles. There were never any actual fights there (can't say that for all the places we played ... we'd just play louder through them and eventually they'd stop). On the whole those early bands had good times I fondly remember. I was getting four pounds fifteen shillings a week in a nine-to-five day job then but making at least a further eight quid a week playing guitar two or three nights. It felt like quite a lot of money back then!!!

 

[Moz]

david keighley wrote:
Well at a wedding do when the singer called up the happy pair i started to play happy birthday instead of here come's the bride,what a plonker i felt.

By now, she probably wished it had just been her birthday.

Moz (the cynic)

 

[Djangette]

losaavedra wrote:
... the bottles started to fly ... but we didn't have the benefit of the chicken wire screen as seen in the Blues Brothers movie. We didn't take it as criticism (all the bands that played there got similar treatment) but it can be just a trifle disconcerting when there's glass showering down the back wall during the solos! Luckily their aim was pretty bad and none of us actually got hit by one of their missiles. There were never any actual fights there . . . but making at least a further eight quid a week playing guitar two or three nights. It felt like quite a lot of money back then!!!

lols - never played in a Colchester pub at the weekend?

It's not the squaddies - mainly it's their women who are most vicious (the female of the species being deadlier I suppose) . . . only time I've seen a band pack up and leave half-way through gig scared of their teeth/lives/instruments - made the Blues Brothers look tame - blood, broken glass, peroxide hair and false fingernails flying all over the place! :laugh:

The mistake being turning up in the first place - never to be repeated!

 

[Pete Thomas]

david keighley wrote:
Well at a wedding do when the singer called up the happy pair i started to play happy birthday instead

Reminds me of a similar one. The Bride requested that very romantic theme from "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves" as they walked up the aisle. They were rather shocked when the happy moment came, only to hear:
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen, Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his merry men. Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.

Oi, That's not Bryan Adams...

 

[PaulyT]

Djangette wrote:

lols - never played in a Colchester pub at the weekend?

I have.... Never really had a problem myself but the first time I played the Cambridge Arms we carried the gear in stepping over the punters rolling about fighting on the floor. The sound engineer at the Twist was a complete tosser and there was a massive punch up at the Piccolo Padre but it didn't involve the band!! Other than that I've played a couple of other gaffs in Colchelster with absolutely no problems at all. The worse problem I ever had to put up with, personally, was some chav in my face shouting "Geezer, geezer, geezer" through half the second set at a gig at the aforementioned "Cambridge Arms". He fell over out of a combination of exhaustion and Stella in the end. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 

[Djangette]

<laughing too much to reply . . .

 

[losaavedra]

The other problem with that venue was that our drummer, being of the handbag persuasion, could never be found after the interval. Neither could one of the barmen. Eventually this 'equal opportunities' concession had to end, mainly 'cos said drummer got jailed for some related behavioural quirk and that was swiftly followed by an overnight exodus to form another band, all made up of people called 'Mike' something-or-other, which was pretty confusing!

Another part of the 'adventure' of playing in bands, which seemed to happen to us quite a lot, was being pulled over by the boys in blue at 1am on the way home. What they possibly saw as suspicious about four or five blokes crammed into a beaten up old vehicle with amps, guitars and bits of drum kit stacked into every available space I can't imagine!!!

 

[PaulyT]

losaavedra wrote:


Another part of the 'adventure' of playing in bands, which seemed to happen to us quite a lot, was being pulled over by the boys in blue at 1am on the way home.

Happens a lot - especially when the transit is registered in the name of someone who has been banned from driving!

😉